MOST right-minded drivers accept they should be penalised when they genuinely do something wrong, such as park without a valid ticket.

However, by that same token, shouldn’t our councils also suffer similar penalties for their errors?

I ask this because a bewildered motorist has passed me a penalty charge notice he received from Wycombe District Council.

Fair enough, he thought, I’ll pay the fine. But when he went online and followed the address given on his penalty advisory note, he found the page could not be displayed.

That’s because the address given on the back of the form, pictured, is www.wycombe.go.uk For those who don’t use the internet, it’s missing a ‘v’ after the ‘go’.

A very minor error (it was correctly given as ‘gov.uk’ elsewhere on the form) and no real harm done, I hear you cry.

Agreed – and I’d forgive anyone else for it, apart from the very people who never seem to forgive any minor transgression we normal citizens make.

Such as buying a ticket from the wrong machine (I did that) or failing to display your ticket because it blew off the dashboard when you shut the door (loads of people seem to have done that).

And they so rarely ever seem to let anyone off. So why are they allowed to make mistakes and we aren’t?